She hated herself like this—shrewish and cruel and fractious.
She wanted peace. Calm. Nothingness.
But . . .
But . . . his wife?! Kieran MacTavish?!
Was she mad?
You idiotic girl! What could you possibly have been thinking, to have made such a choice?!
She could scarcely fathom it.
Had she loved him?
Had she—
Stop.
Enough.
Shaking her head, she dashed past MacTavish, racing down the stairs.
“Jamie . . .” he called to her.
But she kept running.
Down the stairs.
Out the heavy oaken door.
Across the forecourt and onto the path that ran along the ocean cliffs.
Anything to outrace the pounding of her heart and the chasm of decisions she had no memory of making.
12
October 1815
Kieran rapped on the wall of the open door to the carpenter’s cabin.
“How fares the repair?” he asked.
Chen and Jamie looked up from the timber they were currently working. A piece of the decking had begun to rot and needed to be replaced. Chen was steadying the board as Jamie shaved it to size.
“It is coming,” Chen nodded. “Jamie here is capable with a wood plane.”
Jamie raised her head, a crooked smile on her face.
How could everyone not immediately tell the lad was a lass? It was beyond Kieran’s ken. She was a wee fey pixie of a woman—delicate cheekbones, thick lashes framing silvery eyes, an adorably pert chin.
There was absolutely nothing lad-ish about her.
But, he supposed, people saw what they were told to see. After all, he himself had been utterly fooled.
“Thank ye.” She shot Chen a smile and then turned her piercing eyes back to Kieran. “Mr. Chen has promised if I complete my work to his exacting standards, he’ll show me how tae make a firework.”
The husky timbre of her voice sent a frisson of sensation down Kieran’s spine and flared gooseflesh along his forearms.
